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CHICAGO – Conrad Black and his turncoat deputy David Radler both had their turns to squirm yesterday at the dethroned press baron’s fraud trial.

Radler, the government’s star witness, was rattled in the afternoon after a bruising cross-examination by Black’s lawyer forced him to admit he lied repeatedly to government prosecutors, FBI agents and even his own lawyers.

Black’s embarrassment came earlier in the day when the jury was read a memo of his “summer musings” from 2002 that defended his lavish lifestyle, including expensing part of the pay for his London chef and chauffeur to his Chicago newspaper company Hollinger International.

As he acknowledged the growing complaints from Hollinger International shareholders about extravagant spending, Black, who gave up his Canadian citizenship to become a British lord, wrote to Radler and his other top associates that it should not “force us into a hair shirt, the corporate equivalent of sackcloth and ashes.”

As a concession to shareholders, he suggested his wife, the glamorous conservative columnist Barbara Amiel, might take a pay cut for her advisory work, but then the Daily Telegraph – a Hollinger paper in London – “will have to stop underpaying her as a columnist.”

The morning memo was inflammatory enough for Edward Genson, one of Black’s lead lawyers, to demand a mistrial, arguing it was “appealing to class prejudice.”

Judge Amy St. Eve denied Genson’s motion and allowed the largely blue-collar jury to consider its contents when they weigh Black’s guilt on fraud charges.

After grimacing through most of that ordeal, Black got a slight smile on his face as soon as his other lead lawyer, Canadian “Fast Eddie” Greenspan, went on the attack as he began cross-examining Radler.

Black’s No. 2 of nearly four decades stammered and shifted in his seat as Greenspan got him to admit he lied repeatedly to investigators and lawyers who were looking into millions of dollars in controversial payments made to himself, Black and other top associates with ties to Hollinger International.

“Is that what you call it – not entirely truthful?” Greenspan fired back at him. “You mean you were lying.”

“Yes,” Radler conceded meekly.

Radler was telling those lies, the jury was told, right up until about two years ago when he decided to cop a plea with the government in exchange for turning against Black, his partner in the newspaper business since the pair bought their first newspaper together in Quebec in 1969.

Greenspan also accused Radler of offering up answers in his damning testimony at the trial this week to please government prosecutors to ensure they wouldn’t pull his “sweetheart” 29-month jail sentence, which he will serve in a “country club” prison in his native Canada.

Greenspan’s attack came after three days of damaging testimony from Radler, who told the jury that Black was the mastermind behind a scheme to skim the $60 million in allegedly ill-gotten payouts at the heart of the government’s case. janet.whitman@nypost.com